The conventional liberal bias is evident and nauseating as usual. I get that.

What's typical and dishonest is conflating two different senses of the word "bias".

The "bias" exhibited by young children is abstract and almost mathematical: the term "bias" is used in statistics, in the discussion of estimation formulae for means, variances, etc. "Biased" vs "Unbiased" formula for estimating the average of a whole population, given a small sample.

Children can be "biased" in this sense - which is very different from the kind of bias exhibited by actual, you know, racists.

Yet the article invites the smug and self satisfied progressive reader to impute an agency - a "guilt", if you will - to young children. It reeks of a Progressive Calvinism, documenting a kind of "original sin" in babies. When the researchers go into how to "atone and expunge" that sin, one might feel a chill run up the spine.

But underneath that, the research itself is very interesting.

As Fay says, it's no surprise that race affinity bias is innate. I think it's interesting to know that it manifests at 3 months; shows what kind of features the neural nets are processing that early.

But what about their technique for inhibiting this bias? That requires the children to be a bit older, to be able to recognize individuals and learn their names. I agree that the dogmatic framing of the issue is repulsive, but at the end of the day, is it such a bad thing for young children to be exposed to people of different races?

It strikes me as quite plausible that very young children who learn the faces and names of specific individuals (who are of different races) will be better able to read the emotions and expressions of people outside their racial group.

And that's really all the research shows.

I have to say I can't see this as a bad thing, and could argue that it's a good thing. It never hurts to have a more accurate assessment of other people.

I was myself exposed to black people in this way - probably not intentionally, true - but exposed nonetheless, from an early age. I knew their names, their faces, their moods. Some memories are very early; i.e. I don't ever remember "meeting" these people, they were always around; I always knew them from the time I could first remember anything.

When I learned much later that some people believed "black people are different, not like us, not to be trusted, etc" I literally didn't know what they were talking about. Not because I had been indoctrinated in PC ideology, but because my (young) neural nets just didn't understand how someone could think such a thing.

So - again - assuming that the research pans out - would that be such a bad thing?

In fact I could make the case that "diversity for diversity's sake" is only appropriate for young children: many activities are undertaken by adults to help train their children's neural nets before their reach the age of cognition and agency. Among adults, freedom of association should apply strictly.

Of course, parents should be the ultimate arbiter of their children's education. This will likely be just another in a series of interventions which parents typically have no control over, and this is objectionable. Still, I have a hard time seeing the intentional "imprinting" of people of different races into the minds of young children as a bad thing per se.

Yes, I can see how it would. But we do it already. It's actually part of being human - introducing our young to parts of the world before those things are within their cognitive grasp.

Tell me - do you remember learning the alphabet? Did your parents wait until you could think for yourself to show you letters? Likely not - we played with alphabet toys for a reason. Same goes for numbers. I had a puzzle when I was young, where the pieces were the 50 states. I don't remember a time when I didn't know the shape of America.

I was introduced to a child who had chicken pox so I could contract it - I'm old enough that this was still a "thing" when I was young. Now we have vaccines. Same idea: imprinting the immune system.

My mother tried to speak German to me when I was a child. I remember when she started it - which is why it was too late. I was old enough to know what sounded "normal"; I just made fun of her. Fail. She should have started me younger, when I was too young to judge. I might have grown up bilingual, as she did.

Again, I agree that the idea of "imprinting" is scary sounding but it is simply what all cultures do.

While I wouldn't want to take the choice away from parents (which will likely happen, regrettably) I wouldn't condemn some parents for introducing their very young children to people of different races, for the purpose of, yes, imprinting those children with the ability to know and read such people.

But what about their technique for inhibiting this bias? That requires the children to be a bit older, to be able to recognize individuals and learn their names. I agree that the dogmatic framing of the issue is repulsive, but at the end of the day, is it such a bad thing for young children to be exposed to people of different races?

It strikes me as quite plausible that very young children who learn the faces and names of specific individuals (who are of different races) will be better able to read the emotions and expressions of people outside their racial group.

And that's really all the research shows.

Very good point, lewy. But a child at that young age would be operating on instinct (or as they put it "unconscious racial bias") and that is a good thing, eh? Self preservation, "this is the person that is going to protect me". And what exactly are they trying to accomplish with this study? I would guess it's to - ultimately - tell parents how to raise their young children not to be "race biased" and to reject their white privilege.

I just have to shake my head that they would label an infant's reaction as "unconscious racial bias". How on earth are they determining that when the study used only Caucasian babies? They didn't used Asian until they tested the 4-6 yr-olds for a reaction. Even in the toy experiment they didn't study African or African-American babies.

I don't find this "remarkable" at all. It is redundant to everything (grant-rent seeking?) we've learned over the past 200 years about imprinting and bonding between animals, wild and domestic. I've observed it my entire life. I agree with Lewy that the term "bias" is used foolishly. Bias in not innate, but could be inherent due to exposure or non-exposure...of more likely influence of older persons. A new face or feature doesn't cause bias positive or negative, but it may induce suspicion. Wolves are not hateful of man (they likely domesticated us, not vice versa...ancient Egypt if Chip Ahoy wants to weight in on their dogs) they are suspicious of man...and over time for good reason. Yet if you read books such as those by Prof L David Mech you learn that the wild wolf will evolve in four stages of approach...driven by curiosity. People aren't much different, especially at very young ages. If you have a protective dog that never or seldom sees in passing people of color they may exhibit suspicion and anger if approached...I've cured that more often than I can count by structuring the encounters. The kind of bias cited is suspicion (of an unknown) and not a genetic trait or in any way innate. That's my opinion, and not so humbly. Yes, you can have bad dogs, bad wolves, bad horses, and bad people, of many hues (I fought a few of those once upon a time) but they are the product of poor adult influences, not anything natural to the human or animal. Even with avowed enemies there were times we found a breakthrough that reduced the suspicion...USMC LTG Victor Krulak had that idea more universally applied than what even Special Forces is designed to do. He was right.

Hello Aridog, when you say the bias in this study is suspicion of an unknown and not innate or genetic you are talking about how the researchers are labeling it or do you think that an infant's reaction is not innate? I just want to be sure I'm understanding, I find this topic to be very interesting.

I am saying that an infant's reaction is not innate. It is either trained or default suspicion due to lack of exposure. Suspicion is not bias. This "research" proves nothing except that you can shape results by how you structure the experiment. Put two infants together without interference, be they human or animal, and see what happens.

I never heard of Victor Krulak, I looked up his wikipage. Just from that brief summary I can get an idea of what an extraordinary Marine he was. Shame on LBJ for being so thin-skinned to not name him Commandant. Politicians sure treated Gen. Patton in the same manner. I thought this was a typical DC reaction:

While stationed as an observer in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Krulak took photographs with a telephoto lens of a ramp-bowed landing boat that the Japanese had been using. Recognizing the potential use of such a craft by the U.S. armed forces, Krulak sent details and photographs back to Washington, but discovered years later that they had been filed away as having come from "some nut out in China". Krulak built a model of the Japanese boat design and discussed the retractable ramp approach with boat builder Andrew Higgins who incorporated elements of Krulak's input into the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) or "Higgins boat", which played critical roles in the Normandy Landings and amphibious assaults in the Pacific. (my emphasis)

Anyway, they mentioned he was involved in counter-insurgency but didn't go into detail.

USMC LTG Krulak advocated small unit (squad or platoon, depending upon village size) embedding of ordinary US Marines and Soldiers within in and assimilated somewhat with local civilian provincial values and needs. He was right. (Special Forces had established that before him in fact...but were ignored as well) Where it was implemented it worked, simple as that. Just regular Marines and GI's, who are more capable at adapting to local feelings than many believe, MAC-V didn't like his ideas and neither did the LBJ White House or Pentagon, and the end in 1975 proved their folly. The literal "internment" concept of Robert Komer's "Strategic Hamlets" program was a failure (even if Operation Phoenix worked as counter terrorist activity) because it ignored the basic ethnic values of the local people...much of it based upon reverence of ancestors and their legacy, and the land in which they were buried. Tear people away from their historic values and you will NOT win their allegiance ... and we didn't manage that, did we? Frankly I am a little surprised the modern Vietnamese (even if a nation defined by some white guys in Geneva?) are seeking better relations with us...it has to be a massive level of forgiveness for foreign ignorance. If you think about it, that is a big step up in the concept of "civilization."

Even with all of our mistakes, I believe we did do some good in Vietnam all considered. A country defined by people who mostly had never been there (Geneva 1954) made that difficult, in the context of the whole of Indo-China. The mix of various ethnicities and tribes was daunting...lines drawn where non existed previously and old animosities dating to at least 1066 were rife. most of the few remaining Viet contacts I have now, all ex-pats in the USA, some as citizens, at present, seem to focus on that as well as being virulently anti-communist. We did have some common grounds, but it was difficult to sort through the other issues that pre-dated us. Even Ho Chi Minh was our ally in the 40's.

Ari, there's a writer named Michael Totten (Portland native) who did a trip to Viet Nam a while back. The perspective he got was that we (America) are just a blip in Vietnamese history; the eternal enemy is China.

Vietnam itself is now a weird mashup of communist anachronisms (propaganda blaring from loudspeakers at 7AM) at freer markets than we have here.

Pretty big blip considering "Vietnam" did NOT exist before 1954 and the Geneva diktats. Now Indo-China overall has a long history of acrimony with China vis a vis hegemony & Chinese proxies....and within itself between ethnic groups. Think the Tonkinese versus the Cochin Chinese & Khmers (Saigon area) from 1066 onward. Yes-sir, the good old Euro-Whites settled all that by including Cochin China in Vietnam and empowering the most virulent rebel party in the north...e.g., good ole Uncle Ho...saving him the trouble of killing off 100% of his opposition....which he had been busy at for a while.